Tourism recovery leads to record intake at independent travel group

Travel Counsellors, the independent Manchester-based travel company, said it has seen record levels of interest from potential new franchisees following its latest recruitment ‘TC IT’ campaign.

The business has already seen a 122% year on year increase in enquiries from those wanting to join, with more than 70 new enquiries by the end of the first week of January.

The ‘TC IT’ campaign focuses on Travel Counsellors’ business model, demonstrating how franchisees are able to scale in a way that suits them using the company’s personal digital platform and power of its 2,000-strong community.

As the travel industry begins to recover from the disastrous pandemic lockdowns that impacted the tourism industry, the company has already welcomed twelve new leisure and corporate agents in January.

All new joiners are entrepreneurs looking to grow their own businesses with more than 150 years’ combined experience in the sector. These new Travel Counsellors include those from the business travel, leisure, and cruise backgrounds and from those who worked with other home working agencies previously.

The company is investing £10m into its own technology including in-house booking platform Phenix, its myTC app and TC Teams, a global online community platform connecting franchisees and colleagues in one place that promotes and encourages peer-to-peer support and knowledge sharing.

Matt Harding, head of franchise recruitment and training at Travel Counsellors, said: “We have seen a sharp rise in enquiries this year as travel continues to boom and professionals look to reap the rewards and flexibility of running run their own business, whilst being able to provide a really personal service to their customers.

“The level of options in terms of joining and scaling by harnessing our technology and community is proving an extremely attractive proposition, and we’ve seen some phenomenal success for our business owners.

“For example, we have more Travel Counsellors than ever before working in teams and duos and earning an average 30% more as a result. And what’s so exciting is that, as an innovative and growing business, we are continuously exploring new ways our franchisees can work better together, supported by our platform.”

Last year the travel company welcomed more than 150 new franchisees globally, with October and November seeing the largest intake of new franchisees since the Thomas Cook collapse. The company also celebrated record sales for the year, hitting more than £800m, and it is seeing further record sales days in January.